How Executive Resumes Have Changed – And What Employers Expect

Executive resumes have changed dramatically in recent years. No longer is it acceptable to write a resume that simply lists titles, tenure, and responsibilities. If you are an executive or aspire to become one, you need to know how resumes have changed and what employers are expecting to find in an executive resume today.

What is an Executive Resume Today?

A resume is a summary of a person’s background and qualifications. An executive resume is a summary of a person’s background and qualifications that communicates strategic value, leadership impact, and ability to navigate a complex business environment. If you are seeking a seat in a corporate boardroom, you need to know how to communicate that value to a hiring committee or executive search firm.

What Employers Expect in an Executive Resume

One of the most significant differences in an executive resume is that it is no longer acceptable to list job responsibilities. Why? Because corporate boards and search firms know what a CEO, COO, CFO, or VP does. What they don’t know is how you accomplished it. So what should you highlight in an executive resume?

Revenue growth
Market expansion
Efficiency in operations
Turnaround expertise
Mergers and acquisitions
Transformation of an organization

What this means is that you are not only required to communicate business impact, but also to communicate it in a way that is easily read and understood. If you are a high-performing executive, you know that you are being judged on how you impacted business results. So, it is not surprising that many of the most successful executive resumes are those that tout achievements such as:

“Scaled global revenue from $120M to $450M in four years”
“Led post-merger integration of two Fortune 500 divisions”
“Reduced operational costs by 30% while expanding market share”

The idea is to demonstrate strategic leadership capabilities.

In the context of decision-makers having mere seconds to scan the resume, these results need to be immediately visible.

AI and Applicant Tracking Systems Are Now Part of Executive Hiring

The assumption has been that applicant tracking systems (ATS) are only relevant to the hiring process for mid-level or lower positions. This has not been the case for some time.

In fact, many Fortune 500 companies use AI to screen applicants for executive positions, particularly at the beginning of the hiring process. A recent study done by Gartner found that 74% of enterprise-level companies use AI technology to screen applicants, including those for executive positions.

This means that the executive resume must meet two criteria:

-ATS compatibility
-Human readability

For example, if the resume has too many stylized elements, the AI technology may not be able to read the resume effectively. This has resulted in the majority of executive resumes being:

-Clean and simple
-Having standard section headings
-Having clear bullet points
-Having keyword alignment with the job title

Bullet points are more important than ever (versus large chunks of content), as they allow the reader to quickly identify the candidate’s achievements.

The executive resume must be strategically optimized, yet not look like the work of a robot.

Leadership Branding Is Now Essential

The other significant change in the executive resume has been the development of leadership branding.

For many years, many executives simply relied on their job title to demonstrate their leadership abilities. This has changed, and companies want to know what leadership value the executive candidate will be able to bring to the organization. This is usually done in the executive summary or leadership section at the top of the resume.

An effective executive summary should provide answers to the following types of questions:

-What kind of leader is this person?
-What business problems does this person solve?
-What kind of business or industry does this person specialize in?
-What kind of strategic results does this person deliver?

For example, instead of simply listing “Chief Operating Officer,” today’s executive resume might describe this person as:

“Operational Transformation Leader with expertise in high-growth business scalability, improving enterprise efficiency, and driving global market expansion.”

This executive positioning statement helps hiring teams understand the strategic importance of this person.

Companies Are Looking for Change Leaders

Today’s business environment is more volatile than ever.

Digital disruption, global business, and supply chain volatility are just a few of the factors driving businesses to change and adapt. Because of this new business reality, companies are looking for executives who are flexible and can deliver change leadership.

According to Deloitte’s 2020 Global Human Capital Trends report, 7 out of 10 business leaders report that their core business strategy is being able to move quickly and adapt to change.

Today’s executive resumes should include:

-Digital transformation initiatives
-AI adoption strategies
-Organizational restructuring initiatives
-Culture transformation initiatives
-Innovation leadership skills

Soft Skills and Human Leadership Matter More Than Ever

While business and leadership skills are still essential, today’s business environment is more about human leadership than ever. Companies want to see human leadership skills in their executive resumes.

For example:

-Building high-performance teams
-Leading through uncertainty and change
-Communicating vision and strategy
-Organizational culture building

Recent studies on the recruiting process indicate that critical thinking skills are the top priority for talent acquisition heads, followed by many technical skills. This change has been necessitated by the fact that, in addition to strategy, the leader must be able to guide the organization through change.

The Modern Executive Resume: What It Should Include

The resume of the modern executive leader must include the following:

-Cross-functional collaboration
-Organizational alignment
-Talent development
-Stakeholder management

This enables the employer to gain an understanding of the complete leadership package and not just the operational capabilities.

The Modern Executive Resume Is Shorter, Sharper, and More Strategic

Another significant change in the resume of the modern executive leader is its structure.

While the executive leader’s career span may be over three decades, the hiring committee does not want to know the entire history of the executive leader’s career. They want a high-level overview of the executive leader’s capabilities.

Today’s Executive Resume Should Include:

-The last 10 to 15 years of leadership experience
-The executive leader’s major strategic accomplishments
-High-impact leadership initiatives
-The executive leader’s responsibilities on the board

This enables the hiring committee to gain an overview of the executive leader’s capabilities and makes the resume sharper and more strategic. In the competitive executive leader’s job market, sometimes simplicity and clarity are more important than complexity.

What Companies Ultimately Want From Executive Candidates

The question the executive leader must ask themselves when crafting their resume is:

“What will the organization gain with the executive leader on board?”

The hiring companies looking to hire the executive leader are looking for individuals with the capabilities to:

-Grow the organization
-Lead the organization through change
-Build high-performance teams
-Innovate and transform the organization
-Make complex decisions with conviction

An executive leader must be able to clearly and strategically communicate these capabilities on their resume to be noticed by hiring committees and executive recruiters.

Final Thoughts

As organizational life responds to the challenges of rapid technological change, global competitive pressures, and changing workforce expectations, the need for organizational leaders who can navigate these complexities and deliver results has created a new imperative.

Executives willing to adapt their resume to the changing realities of the business environment, with its emphasis on results, transformational leadership, and strategic value, will be much more successful in the competitive executive resume market.

For those considering new executive roles, the message is clear:

Your resume must be the narrative of the results you produce, not the jobs you’ve had.

7 Changes to Improve Your Executive Resume Today

Executive Resumes

Your executive resume is one of the most critical vehicles for conveying your leadership qualities, achievements, and strategic vision. It may be tempting to treat it as a sort of laundry list, touting job titles and their tasks, but really, it’s about showing impact, leadership potential, and success.

Executive resume writers (like my team) follow a set of guidelines to create an executive resume that demands attention.

The following are seven simple things you can do to turn your resume into a powerful personal marketing tool:

1) Highlight Achievements in Relationship to Return on Investment – ROI

Why It Matters: You are the driver of growth and profitability as an executive. Quite often, one of the key measures of your success will be your ability to improve ROI. Start thinking of what you can add to that and show how you offer it. Backing it up with accomplishments will help prove that.

How to Implement: Instead of listing responsibilities, show added value to the companies you have led. Use hard metrics, such as percentages and dollar amounts, to demonstrate impact. People love numbers. Make sure you have them listed on your resume.

Example: Instead of saying, “Oversaw sales department”, say, “Grew sales revenue 45% over three years to drive an incremental $5M in revenue.”

Pro Tip: Be specific. What exactly was improved-cutting costs, increasing efficiencies, launching new products? Quantifying your achievements gives the recruiter an idea of what you bring to the table.

2) Exude Executive Presence

Why It Matters: My friend, Gina Riley, explained it perfectly at the NRWA conference recently.
Executive presence isn’t about looking the part; it’s about actually developing into leader-permeated confidence, authority, and strategic thinking. It also helps eliminate doubt about the job seeker’s candidacy.

How to Implement: Include language that emphasizes your role in setting strategic direction, making high-stakes decisions, and leading initiatives. Don’t forget to add soft skills and how you impact others.

Example: “Led the strategy vision and execution of a $50M company transformation while securing stakeholder buy-in across five departments.”

Pro Tip: If applying for a more executive-level position, use words like “executive strategy”, “visionary leadership”, and “transformational change”. This should be reflected on your presence in your LinkedIn profile.

3) Demonstrate Team Leadership and Development

Why It Matters: Being able to build and lead successful teams is, for many roles, a key component of being an effective executive. How you lead is just as important as the results you showcase.

How to Deliver: Emphasize how you impact team performance- through the development of better leaders, improved engagement, or greater retention.

Example: “Led a team of 100+, across three regions, to realize a 30% increase in employee engagement and a 15% reduction in turnover within two years.”

Pro Tip: If you’ve ever mentored future leaders or built leadership programs, be sure to include that here. It shows that you’re all about talent development and making sure that the organizations within which you work are going to grow and thrive.

4) Add Board Experience

Why It Matters: Board experience indicates a high level of trust, capability in governance, and strategic acumen. There needs to be a mix of hard skills, soft skills, operational expertise, financial skills, and vision.

How to Execute: Mention formal board roles held in a corporate, non-profit, or advisory capacity. Include specific contributions such as policy development, financial oversight, or strategic guidance.

Example: “Board Member, XYZ Corporation-led governance reforms that reduced compliance risks 20% and accelerated decision-making 25%.”

Pro Tip: Even if you haven’t had formal board experience, highlight your interactions with boards or advisory roles you have played. That could show that you are ready for board-level responsibility.

5) Use Executive Keywords Strategically

Why It Matters: Keywords are important to pass through ATS systems and to the eyes of a recruiter or hiring manager. Your resume will have a higher ranking with the use of proper keywords at the executive level.

How to Implement: Research job descriptions for the roles to which you’re applying and incorporate high-impact terms such as “P&L responsibility,” “strategic planning,” “mergers and acquisitions,” “growth strategy,” and “stakeholder management.”

Example: If the job posting asks for experience with “organizational change,” make sure that your experience includes the precise phrase, such as: “.led organizational change initiatives that resulted in a 35% efficiency increase.”

Pro Tip: Tailor your resume to each opportunity with keywords specific to that role. You can also check out the most-used terms in similar roles’ LinkedIn profiles for ideas.

6) Include a Potent Executive Summary

Why It Matters: Your executive summary sets the tone for the rest of the resume. It has to, in capsule form, provide an overview of career achievements, core competencies, and your leadership philosophy.

How to Do This: Stick to 3-4 sentences; highlight your most valuable accomplishments and strategic skills. It should reflect your career goals and value you will bring into an organization.

Example: “Transformational executive leader with 15+ years of experience driving growth in Fortune 500 companies. Proven track record of increasing profitability by up to 50% through innovative product development and operational efficiencies.”

Pro Tip: Do not use generic phrases and try to keep the fluffy adjectives to a minimum. Make the summary personalized, at the same time that it is compelling and relevant to what the company is seeking.

7) Emphasize Cross-Functional Collaboration

Why it’s a must: It’s quite common for modern business leaders to work across multiple company teams: finance, marketing, human resources, operations—the list goes on and on. By highlighting cross-functional collaboration and functioning, you’re demonstrating adaptability and an all-round appreciation of the enterprise in question.

How to achieve it: While trying to work out how to describe your experience, reflect on where you have been able to help others get something done. This may involve projects such as the development and launch of a new product with marketing and R&D teams or working with finance on budget development.

Example: “Partnered with marketing, sales, and finance teams in the launch of a new product, delivering first-year sales of $10M and a 20% increase in market share.”

Pro Tip: Action verbs include, but are not limited to, the words “collaborated,” “partnered,” and “coordinated,” which drive home the point of your contribution to teamwork.

Wrapping It Up

Improving your executive resume does not have to be an overhaul of sorts. Minor modifications can work wonders:
– Quantify the achievements of the job
– Create commanding executive presence
– Use keywords appropriately

You will come across as sturdy leadership material. Take these seven steps today, and watch your resume get a complete makeover, propelling your career upward.

5 Essential Soft Skills Employers Want You to Have

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In today’s ever-changing work environment, soft skills play a pivotal role in determining professional success. Unlike hard skills, which are about a person’s skill set and ability to perform a certain type of task or activity, soft skills are interpersonal and broadly applicable in the workplace.

Here are five essential soft skills for professional success, along with examples of how to showcase them in your resume or cover letter.

1. Communication

Importance: Effective communication is crucial in any workplace setting. It involves clearly conveying ideas, listening actively, understanding others’ perspectives, and responding appropriately. Good communicators can inspire and influence people, fostering a positive and productive work environment. Think about the leaders you know who inspired you. What was one of their best qualities? I bet it was the ability to communicate with their team.

How to Use in Resume/Cover Letter: In your resume, include instances where your communication skills led to positive outcomes, such as resolving conflicts, delivering presentations that won significant accounts, or leading workshops that improved team performance.
In your cover letter, you might write, “I have honed my communication skills through various leadership roles, consistently ensuring clear and effective dissemination of objectives and fostering an atmosphere of open dialogue.”

2. Teamwork

Importance: Collaboration and the ability to work well with others are fundamental in most jobs. Employers look for individuals who can contribute to the team, share ideas, and support their colleagues to achieve common goals while not involving themselves in drama.

How to Use in Resume/Cover Letter: Highlight specific projects where your ability to work in a team was evident in achieving results. For instance, “Collaborated with a cross-functional team to increase project efficiency by 30%, demonstrating strong teamwork and problem-solving skills.” In a cover letter, mention how you believe in the power of teamwork to overcome complex challenges and bring innovative solutions to life.

3. Problem-Solving

Importance: The ability to identify problems, analyze underlying causes, and implement solutions is invaluable. Problem-solving skills show that you can navigate challenges creatively and effectively, a quality that is highly prized in any role. We like to use CAR stories (Challenge, Action, Results). What was the challenge you faced? What action did you take to change it? What were the results?

How to Use in Resume/Cover Letter: Provide examples of situations where you successfully solved a problem or made an improvement. For example, “Identified a bottleneck in the production process and implemented a new strategy that reduced delivery times by 20%.” Your cover letter could explain a scenario where your problem-solving skills led to a significant breakthrough in a project or task.

4. Adaptability

Importance: In a fast-paced work environment, change is constant. Being adaptable means you can handle unexpected situations with ease and remain flexible in your approach to challenges and new tasks. How can we forget the pandemic? Adaptability in a time of crisis wins every time.

How to Use in Resume/Cover Letter: Mention experiences where you had to quickly adapt to changes or learn new skills to meet the demands of your role. In your resume, this could be, “Adapted to a rapidly changing work environment by learning new software in a short period, which increased the team’s productivity by 15%.” In your cover letter, reflect on a time when your adaptability allowed you to successfully navigate a difficult situation.

5. Emotional Intelligence

Importance: Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and those of others. It involves empathy, social skills, self-awareness, and self-regulation. High emotional intelligence can lead to better relationships at work, improved leadership skills, and a positive workplace culture.

How to Use in Resume/Cover Letter: Highlight roles or situations where your emotional intelligence made a difference. This could be through conflict resolution, mentoring colleagues, or leading a team through a stressful period. For example, “Leveraged my high emotional intelligence to mediate a conflict between team members, resulting in enhanced team harmony and productivity.” In your cover letter, discuss how your emotional intelligence has been a key factor in your professional development and success.

Conclusion

Soft skills are increasingly becoming the differentiators between good and great professionals. By effectively showcasing these skills in your resume and cover letter, you can demonstrate to potential employers that you not only have the technical skills required for the job but also the interpersonal capabilities that will make you a valuable addition to their team.
Remember, the key is to provide specific examples that highlight how these skills have contributed to your successes and how they can be beneficial in the role you’re applying for.

Is Your Executive Resume Interesting?

Resume WritingResumes

It happened…the call about the executive job of your dreams opening up just came through via your contact, and the HR Director wants to see your resume. You might be ready to take the next step in your career, but is your resume ready for an executive-level position? Submitting a bland, non-focused resume with boring content will do nothing but get you taken off of the “call for an interview” list.

Moving on from a middle management position to the c-suite is not for the faint of heart, and your resume needs to show that you have the experience, skills, ROI, and drive to do the job, and do it well. Writing your resume is not just including your career history and where you received your degree, it’s more about creating a document that tells the complete story of who you are, what you have achieved, how you achieved it, and the value you will provide at the next level…in a creative and exciting manner. Below are 5 quick tips that will help you to ensure that your updated resume effectively states “I’m ready for the c-suite and you need to hire me”…

Your format matters – People judge books by their covers! Start with an eye-catching format. While you don’t need to put so much color on your resume that it looks like the 4^th of July blew up on your piece of paper, a pop of color will appeal to the reader and help your document to stand out right from the get-go. A font style that is clean and business-like is just as important. Fancy scripts may look pretty, but they are difficult to read and you don’t want people having to work hard to read your text (and believe me, if they have to work hard, they aren’t going to read much past your name).

An exciting executive summary is a must – create a strong career summary that communicates what you have done in your career and the value you can provide at the next level. Include position and industry-specific keywords (not buzzwords…there is a difference!) that match your target position.

Highlight your biggest achievements – include a “Career Highlights” section to give a brief synopsis of your biggest accomplishments if you want. Hint: quantifiable achievements speak the loudest and make a stronger impact than just a bullet list of text. Graphs and charts tell a quick story as well!

Your career history needs to make a big impact in a small amount of time – if you are at an executive-level, it’s pretty safe to say that you have had quite a few years of employment under your belt. Focus on your most recent work experience, and don’t go back more than 15 years into your career history (you can summarize the earlier stuff). A chronological format is the easiest, most clean-cut way to do this. The exception – if your career goals/new job are unrelated to your current job…then you will want to use more of a function format to show that you DO still have the skills and experience for the job you’re trying to land.

Your education information is not as important as your career history – so move it to the end of your resume. Like your career history, degrees received 15+ years ago are probably not going to be as important to the hiring manager as your most recent career experience. Include your degrees and any relevant certifications, but remove the years. The degree is what is important, not when you received it, and announcing “I’m really old…” on your resume is probably not going to win points with the hiring manager. Minimize ageism by eliminating years if they go beyond fifteen. Wow them with your accomplishments and skillset instead.

If you are being recommended for that coveted c-suite position, be sure you have a resume that can back-up up the recommendation. Don’t embarrass yourself (or the friend that recommended you) by submitting a bland resume that does nothing to market you as the ideal candidate for the job. Instead, take the time to update your resume and maximize your chances of being the candidate whose next phone call is “we’d like to offer you the position”!

Putting Together An Executive Resume

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An executive resume should be created with the end purpose in mind, that of getting you an interview for the job opening. Do not just list all the things you have done in former jobs, for resumes at this level more information is needed about the processes used to get the job done.
Do not write a confusing history of former positions. Start your work history with your latest position and end with your first working position relevant to the job opening you are intending to get an interview for.
For an executive resume, 2-4 pages is acceptable. I always say, ‘if the experience warrants it, then add another page’ (however, less is more sometimes–I try to stick to 2ish). Do ensure all the information is concise and relevant. Employers do not want to have to sift through pages of irrelevant information. It would be wise to invest in having a professional resume writer create a resume for you if you are unsure of the current formats used for resumes (plug, plug, plug).
Always be very specific in your writing and information, use precise numbers to convey any targets that you have been set and met in previous positions, it all helps to build a better picture of your abilities by the employer reading the resume. Creating a focused, targeted, concise resume is what employers are looking for in an executive resume. It is vitally important that it stands out from the crowd before it has even a chance of being read at all. Employers are busy people and need to know immediately if your resume is worth their time reading, and an executive resume can help with this!